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Doctor Who: The Newbies Guide

The Daleks' Masterplan

Classic Series TV Story

Episodes: 12: The Nightmare Begins; Day of Armageddon; Devil's Planet; The Traitors; Counter Plot; Coronas of the Sun; The Feast of Steven; Volcano; Golden Death; Escape Switch; The Abandoned Planet; Destruction of Time

First Episode Broadcast: 13th November 1965

Writer: Terry Nation and Dennis Spooner

Director: Douglas Camfield

Script Editor: Donald Tosh

Producer: John Wiles

Season: Season 3

Average: 5(1 vote)

This is the fourth story in Season Three.

Of the twelve episodes, only parts 2, 5, and 10 exist in the archives.

Where does this fit?

This happens shortly after The Myth Makers

Story Arcs

The single episode Mission to the Unknown is a prequel to this story.

Doctor

The first Doctor looks like a human in his sixties. He is physically quite frail, but has a keen intellect. He is paternalistic towards his companions, and has a degree of arrogance towards others. He sometimes mispronounces words.

Companion(s)

Steven Taylor was a space pilot from an unknown time in the future. His spacecraft landed on the planet Mechanus, where a group of robots called Mechanoids held him prisoner. In The Chase, he escaped when the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki visited the planet whilst on the run from a Dalek time machine. He stowed away on the TARDIS not knowing it was capable of time travel.

Katarina was a handmaiden to the prophetess Cassandra in ancient Troy. During the fall of Troy, she was sent to bring a message to the Doctor and Steven Taylor. She entered the TARDIS, which she considered to be a temple, and ended up joining them on their journey through space and time.

Recurring and Historical Characters

The Daleks are a race of mutants encased in powerful cyborg bodies whose shape is reminiscent of pepperpots. The Doctor first encountered them on their home planet of Skaro in The Daleks (Classic Series Season 1). In that story, they were confined to a single city on Skaro and the Doctor thought he had defeated them forever. He later encountered them in The Dalek Invasion of Earth (Classic Series Season 2), where they had conquered the planet Earth, and The Chase (Classic Series Season 3), when they had acquired a time travel machine and were chasing the TARDIS through time and space. In both instances, he managed to defeat them. In Mission to the Unknown, they were plotting against the Solar System and their plot was uncovered.

The monk is another member of the Doctor's race. His TARDIS is a better model than the Doctors, and it retains its ability to camouflage itself to blend in with its surroundings. He previously encountered the Doctor in 1066, when the Doctor thwarted his plan to change the outcome of both the Battle of Stamford Bridge and the Battle of Hastings. The Doctor stranded him there by shrinking the internal dimensions of his TARDIS to be the same size as the external ones.

Recommended Viewing

The prequel episode Mission to the Unknown sets the scene for this story. In this episode, SSS agent Marc Cory discovers a Dalek plot against the Solar System and records a message about it before being exterminated.

The previous story The Myth Makers (briefly) introduces Katarina. The Season 2 story The Time Meddler introduces the Meddling Monk.

Recommended Reading

None.

Recommended Listening

None.

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Comments

There is no Time Lord called "The Monk" or "The Meddling Monk". It always makes my head spin whenever anyone thinks there is a Time Lord who calls himself 'The (Meddling) Monk'. Never was, never will be.

In 1066, the Doctor and his companions encounter another one of the Doctor's people(not yet identified as 'Time Lords'). This individual has disguised himself as a monk. Wanting to alter events in 1066, he uses an abandoned monastery as his base of operations, and as he's staying in a monastery, he disguises himself as a monk, wearing a monk's cowl. He is not a monk, he never was a monk, he never will be a monk, and her certainly does not self-identify as "the Monk". It is made abundantly clear on more than one occasion that the monk's outfit is temporary clothing, used to blend into the monastery. And the Doctor even dresses likewise. The reason the credits list him as 'The monk' is the same reason that Anthony Ainley is credited as 'The portreeve' in Castrovalva.

And likewise, his 'meddling' aspect also shows idiocy. Is blowing up an entire Viking fleet with nuclear warheads "meddling"? And of course, he can't carry on being "the meddling monk" as

a)he never was a monk, and never called himself 'the monk' the way the Doctor calls himself "the Doctor"

b)he can't have carried on meddling, or else he would have completely rewritten the history of Earth several times over by now.

And contrary to what morons like Paul Cornell or Jon Preddle would like to believe, he was most definitely not "stranded on the ice planet". At all.

It's obvious who the Time Lord disguised as the monk is. It was obvious enough for DWM #75 to say that this Time Lord disguised as a monk is the same Time Lord who disguised himself as Sir Gilles Estram in The King's Demons. Obvious enough for a 1988 edition of Mastermind to say straight out that the monk is the Master. Obvious enough for both the FASA RPG and its "Master": module to say that the Master had disguised himself as a monk in 1066 in order to try and change the outcome of the Battle of Hastings, and to say that the first actor to play the Master was Peter Butterworth.

And yet, there are still people who think that there actually is a Time Lord who calls himself "The Monk" and/or "The Meddling Monk". And that he was stranded on the ice planet. And that all he does is meddle in history. And that he's definitely NOT the Master, no sir.

Even if we buy your theory that the Monk is the Master (and the only in-universe evidence for this theory is material from the 80s roleplaying game - there are several other stories that establish quite clearly that they are different characters), in this particular guide, describing the character as the Master would be silly. This is a guide to help newbies understand a story that was made many years before the character of the Master was created. And in this story he is exclusively referred to as "the monk" or variations thereof, with the only continuity references about him being back to his first story (The Time Meddler), where he was also referred to as the Monk.

He isn't the Monk like you said, he isn't The Master or The War Chief (Magnus) either. He is clearly another Time Lord who became a renagade. Look at The War Chief, he is obviously not called The War Chief but that is what we call him.

He isn't the Monk, but we still call him that. Forever that time lord will be called The Monk.

he's not called 'the Monk', and he's not called 'Mortimus' either. Trying to bring the name 'Mortimus' into things creates numerous problems. Should we look at things....

1)'Mortimus' is first used in Paul Cornell's "novel" No Future. Here we learn that "Mortimus" FIRST met the Doctor in The Time Meddler(contradicting both the television serial AND its Target novelisation), and that he was stranded on the ice planet at the end of The Daleks' Master Plan(contradicting both THAT telesision serial and its Target novelisation). No Future also states that "Mortimus" left Gallifrey fifty years after the Doctor, which is inaccurate, which is Cornell completely mishearing what was ACTUALLY said in The Time Meddler.

2)Then, in Divided Loyalties, we find out that the Doctor and 'Mortimus' are very good friends ON GALLIFREY. Oh, and 'Mortimus' leaves Gallifrey BEFORE the Doctor.

3)'Mortimus' is reused by the Big Finish Audios....

First, the EIGHTH Doctor meets "the Monk"(never called 'Mortimus'), and it is stated that 'Mortimus' left Gallifrey fifty years after the Doctor, and that they haven't seen each other since The Daleks' Master Plan. And he very irritatingly introduces HIMSELF as 'the Monk'.

In 'The Rani Elite', the Sixth Doctor and the Rani discuss their time on Gallifrey, including their old friend, 'Mortimus'.

Then, in the "loco Doctors" trilogy, "the Monk" meets the FIFTH Doctor And here, he says that the Doctor is the ONLY ONE who calls him 'the Monk'.

Can it get more ridiculous? In 'The Black Hole' the SECOND Doctor meets another Time Lord who everyone starts calling 'the Monk', even though he's just said that that was a one-off disguise.

'The Monk' then pops up in a couple of BF short trips, meeting both the Third and the Fourth Doctors.

He then reappears in another Eighth Doctor audio box set, 'Doom Coalition 4', again called 'the Monk' by everyone.